Getting Ready

The warm weather and steady melting, despite the time of year, have caused us to start thinking about the upcoming growing season, our fourth.

So far, with each successive year we've improved our production and selected an ever improving crop array.  Obviously, we're hoping for similar similar successes this year by building on what we've learned in past years.

Over the past three years we've two crops that have proven to be particularly successful: potatoes and celery.

Last year, thanks to Jeannette and my Mother, we had our potatoes in the ground early and producing potatoes early enough that we were able to have two crops in part of our potato patch.

Though starter celery plants were purchased at the same time as the original seed potatoes, they didn't end up going in the ground quite as early.  If I recall correctly, we again pushed our luck and put them in just a week or so later, still in early May.

This year, based on a few photos I saw online, I'm going to try a slightly different approach with the celery.  Instead of (or maybe in addition to) starter plants, I'm going to try to use the bases of the celery bunches that I buy over the next few weeks to start the plants.

So far, I've got two such plants going and I seem to be making some progress.

I'm really quite impressed by how much development I'm getting after about a week or so.

That said, I suspect that without the development of a new root structure - which I haven't seen yet - this operation may not be much of a success.  Assuming I do get new roots and the growth continues, I'm hoping that by the time we're ready to transplant our celery plants we'll have a few that will be ready to go and they will have come to us at no additional cost.

Cameron - 11

Neil - 0

Raised beds and our long-term plan

Our first vegetable garden attempt more or less just consisted of us deciding on a location for our garden and then ripping up most of the grass, adding some peat, planting some seeds, and calling it a day.  Not surprisingly, aside from the potatoes, it was a pretty big disappointment.  Not only were there a few specific drainage problems, the overall soil quality was pretty poor (which we soon learned is common throughout the Regina region).

Part way through the first summer it became pretty clear that some sort of raised bed option would be required if we wanted soil and drainage that might lead to half-reasonable crop production.

We decided to go with a Lee Valley raised bed kit option that made for the pretty quick construction of our raised beds.  We were able to crank out three beds in an afternoon last year.  Of course, filling these guys with top soil probably took more time and effort than their construction.

After a relatively successful growing season last year we decided to expand our set up to include a fourth raised bed.  Again, the bed construction was quite quick.

Because we had only one raised bed to fill, instead of three, we decided to fill it with bagged topsoil and peat we purchased at local garden centres instead of having a load of topsoil delivered.  Several garden centre runs later this objective was completed.

Soon after we completed the fourth raised bed we realized that because much of the area between our raised beds was the same area that had been the site of our original garden site the grass we'd torn up had come back as weeds.  This looked really bad and probably wasn't helping our raised beds stay weed free.  

We decided that we would install a brick barrier and some weed barrier before dropping a few tonnes of rocks around the beds.

Turns out that rocks are heavy and hard to shovel.  We didn't manage to redistribute the rocks in a single session as I originally, overly optimistically, thought we would.  To make matters worse, immediately after our first rock moving session the garage, with all of our recently re-housed tools, became inaccessible because the garage door broke in the down position.

After some hand moving and also our garage door repair, I was finally to take a few more cracks at rock moving and finally finish up.

No we just have to work at getting grass to grow in the various bald patches and weeds to not grow everywhere else.  Maybe in a few years from now we might actually have a backyard that isn't most embarrassing (and because we don't have a garage or fence obscuring the view the entire alley can see our shame).

Looks aside, the great news is that all four raised beds seem to be doing quite well.  If all goes as planned by the end of the summer we will have the following crops: potatoes, green onions, celery, peas, edamame, peppers, cherry tomatoes, butter nut squash, pumpkins, green beans, carrots, spinach, kale, romaine lettuce, radishes, and kohlrabi (as well as an assortment of herbs and berries).  

A Few Quick Notes 623

-As noted previously, today has been a fair bit cooler than forecast.  To the best of my knowledge, these cooler temperatures can all be attributed to the sun-blocking powers of massive quantities of throat and lung-irritating smoke.  It seems reasonable to assume that as long as the smoke sticks around the temperatures will stay down, which is nice because it's not really open window weather at the moment.

-We've finally started harvesting food from our garden.  So far we've managed to grab a few early kale leaves, some celery stalks, and quite a number of green onions.  I suspect that for the next few weeks, at least until the peas come in, we'll more or less be suck with these three vegetables.

-On the fruit front we've also managed to grab a few raspberries and a few handfuls of haskap.  While the haskap are likely just about done for the year, our real raspberry harvest is still probably a few weeks away.  Hopefully by next year, when all of our plants are a little more established, we should really have good production from both types of plants.  Sadly, our strawberries, now relocated to the front of the house, don't look as though they'll ever do all that much.

-Since some library school friends in town for a conference paid us a visit a few weeks ago Jeannette and I have been a little obsessed with tofu shish kebabs.  Prepared with the broiler or the barbecue, these things are really great.

A Few Quick Notes 614

-Though thunder showers were originally in today's forecast, it turned out to be an almost perfect day.  It's been sunny, still, and about 22 for quite a while.

-Much to my chagrin, thanks to coaxing from Jeannette I ended up watching today's 'Labour Day Classic' between the Roughriders and the Blue Bombers.  After the lead changing hands a few times in the 4th quarter the Riders managed to pull out a last minute victory.  Despite the lead changes, it didn't seem to be a particularly exciting or well-played game (not that I'm in a position to be much of a judge of these things).

The best part of the game was from about the 1st quarter on when Pierre decided to take a nap on my lap.  He more or less stayed in place for the rest of the game (even after I repositioned him).

-Sooner rather than later Jeannette and I need to arrange for a new garage door.  We did some preliminary investigating a few weeks ago and a little more today.  Hopefully we'll have something fingered out in the next few days.  The upside may be that the new door should be much better than our old door, even before it was broken.

-Our garden harvests have been quite plentiful this year.  Today I was able to make some cabbage soup with carrots, green beans, and potatoes from our garden.  Maybe today or tomorrow I'll have to head out and snag a big harvest of spinach and kale and also a squash or two.

The new soil and raised beds we added to our set-up really seem to have helped.  If we're able to add two more next year, as we're planning, we should really be in position to have a substantial harvest.

-Maybe I'll manage to get Jeannette to go for a walk this evening.  It really is a perfect night for a walk.

Overrun with beans

Since the beans started pouring in a few weeks ago they've been coming non-stop.  It seems that we can't go more than a day or two without needing to spend at least a few minutes harvesting things.

Though there are a few repeats below, I thought I might bring together a few photos of our harvests to really demonstrate what I'm talking about (and these were all taken between July 13 and August 2, 2013).

Of course, with all of our success we're still waiting for a few things.  Despite the early presence of juvenile tomatoes we're still without even a reddish tomato.  Our edamame plants, despite their ever increasing size, are without fruit (or even flowers - though these should be just around the corner).  I guess it's still just early August so I probably shouldn't be too worried.

The harvest keeps on happening

It seems that every day we have to harvest some of our crops or they're turn bad.

Amazingly, even though I did a once over on the peas and beans yesterday (pictured above), I managed to snag another few servings worth today.  Of course, I should also mention that Jeannette also snagged a nice handful of kale yesterday after I finished my once-over of the place.

The other exciting news is that a few of our female pumpkin flowers actually look as though they might  end up doing something other than failing to flower before they die unceremoniously.

I'm a little worried that these developments may be a little late for us to end up with a full-fledged pumpkin by harvest time - but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

In other news, after removing the bushy parts of an arbor vitae and some evergreen bushes in the front of the house a few weeks ago we removed the stumps this morning.  Much to my surprise, the stumps came out much more easily and quickly than I anticipated.

Why these developments are important is that they should now put us in a good position to turn the area that previously housed the bushes into a secondary vegetable garden (hopefully with fewer weeds than our primary garden).  If all goes according to plan I think we'll even be able to select plants and plant positioning that will allow us to have a very attracting area.

Finally, a harvest to write home about

So after a slow ramp-up, our garden has finally started to really come on strong.

This morning we were able to harvest quite a few beans, as well as our largest harvest of pea pods.  Jeannette even managed to snag an almost full-size mini-beet.
 

We may finally have so many garden fresh vegetables that we won't be able to eat them all on the day they were harvested.

Of course, our herb pot also continues to do well.

Even with the strange new additions I found this morning.

And after a seemingly slow start, our tomato plants are finally with tomatoes (though they don't look as though they'll be red any time soon).

And in case you haven't guessed it yet, we have definitely fallen down on the weeding.  It seems that every time we try to go out and weed we are just overwhelmed with mosquitoes and it doesn't seem worth it.

And the harvest expands

After returning from the local farmers' market we went out to our own garden and harvested a few things.

I'm particularly impressed with the number of pea pods we found, as well as the two sample potatoes we dug up.  I'm a little bummed with the size of the beets, but apparently they're a mini variety.

Things are definitely coming along and we should have more beans that we know what to do with very shortly (and while they're coming in more peas will continue to come in).

This is definitely pretty exciting.

Harvest progress

In late May Jeannette and I planted our garden.  At the time this seemed a little late, if anything, as Spring was already several weeks behind schedule.

After several weeks of rainy grey weather, if anything, it felt as though we'd jumped the gun and planted far too early.

Now that we're into July things finally feel as though they're catching up (or at least close to catching up).

Of course, the weeds are also growing quite well and we've definitely fallen down on our weeding duties.

Our herb barrel has also really picked up over the course of the past month.

In early June it didn't have much going on.

And now in early July it's damn near full (and that's after a fair bit of chives, thyme, and mint harvesting).

Of course, we've also had our fair share of radishes (actually a full row of them at this point).

And Jeannette's been collecting various greens (beet, kale, spinach, pea, and strawberry spinach) for at least the past two weeks).

So just to round up what we've had so far because I haven't been diligent about photographing the harvest we've managed to get at least a handful of each of the following (in more or less this order):

1) Chives
2) Thyme
3) Apple Mint
4) Radishes
5) Spinach
6) Strawberry Spinach
7) Beet Greens
8) Pea Shoots
9) Pea Pods
10) Kale
11) Spearmint
12) Basil (two varieties)

My recollection of what we have left to come is as follows:

1) Green Beans
2) Edamame
3) Beets
4) Hot Peppers
5) Sweet Peppers (two varieties)
6) Pumpkins
7) Celery
8) Carrots
9) Sweet Corn
10) Potatoes
11) Tomatoes
12) Onions

If all the stuff on this second list works out we may actually manage something of a feed for ourselves at some point this summer.  I'll be particularly impressed with us if we can somehow managed herb roasted potatoes and corn at the same time (and maybe with some edamame for protein).

A Few Quick Notes 598

-So after several months without rain and clouds grey skies and rain have finally returned to Regina.  For the better part of the past few weeks we've had at least grey skies for part of most days and somewhat regular rain.  The upside of this weather is that on Thursday night I got to see my first double rainbow, the downside is that it's almost always not quite as warm or sunny as I was expecting it to be at this time of year in Regina.

-Despite the grey skies, cool temperatures, and plentiful rain the plants we planted in our garden a few weeks ago are mostly growing.  Sure, most of them would probably be doing a fair bit better with a few more hours of sun a day and soil that at least occasionally is a little drier, but that hasn't meant that most of them haven't continued to grow - if somewhat slowly.

Not surprisingly, the radishes are furthest along.  And had this weekend not been as rainy as it was we would have even planted a second and third row so that we can start to have a stead stream of radishes. The peas and beans are also doing well, though, again, more sun would surely help.  

The plants that seem to be growing particularly slowly are our pepper and corn plants.  The corn plants seem not to have managed to make it beyond about three inches while the pepper plants don't seem to be any taller than they were when we moved them from indoors to the garden.

In any event, the fact that most of these plants are even alive seems kind of remarkable given the incredible number of weeds and the high clay content of the soil.  I suspect that not weeds be an annual battle, but so will the soil.  Who would have guessed that in a province known for agriculture that the soil is mostly just clay?  In Newfoundland it's always a challenge to put a shovel into the ground because of the rocks - here the rock-free clay is just to dense and goopy for one's shovel.

-A friend of mine from library school is coming into Regina for a conference tonight and I've offered to give her a ride from the airport to where she's staying.  Not only am I looking forward to catching up after about five years, having someone else in the car finally provided me with the motivation I needed to finally get around to giving the car a quick vacuum and clean for the first time since we've owned it.  Not surprisingly, the back was a fair bit cleaner than the front.

-Now that our balcony rail has been in place for a week we've started thinking about our next project.  As some discussion we finally settled on re-roofing our garage.  Yesterday I picked up most of the supplies, though I still have to snag some flashing.  So whenever the skies clear and the rain stops we'll have to start on this project.  I'm a little worried that this is going to be a bit of a nasty project - but at least at the end we'll hopefully have a garage that doesn't leak quite as much as our garage does currently.

Oh, and then once we're done with the roof we'll have to move on to re-siding it.  Hooray!  

Fortunately, I think we've got the game plan for this more or less figured out - though that doesn't mean that there won't be surprises when we finally get around to it in a few weeks.

The Birds II

It seems that my pigeon deterrence installations of a few weeks ago weren't quite as successful as I'd hoped.  Over the past few days what had just been hanging out under our eaves has reverted to a major nest building operation.

Obviously I will have to initiate a nest removal operation later this morning or early this afternoon.

Another worrying trend is that the appearance of dead birds in our backyards, at least as of a few days ago, has continued.  On the same day I even found two just feet apart from each other.

Of course, it took me a little longer to spot the one hiding in the fence.

On a more positive note, aside from the bird nest removal project we're also hoping to finally get around to planting our garden (after we add another few bags of peat moss and topsoil to the clay base that is Regina soil).